Tell it to Trump, and he’ll probably prefer not to believe you. But farmers are now starting to feel the results of the US President’s mass foreign worker deportations. Thousands are on the verge of losing millions…
Ian Chandler’s Oregon cherry operation: One of thousands
of US soft fruit orchards that stand to lose millions this
season because there’s no one to pick the crops…
There are thousands of examples out there of early-harvest fruit growers CNN reporters could have chosen to illustrate what’s happening to a huge number of farmers who’ve hit an insurmountable wall with Trump’s food tariffs and deportations. Cherries might just be the most vulnerable soft fruit there is. And it’s past time for the new crop to come in. But Oregon grower Ian Chandler (see photo, top of page) says his 2025 crop is starting to look ‘mummified’ on his 125 acres of trees near Portland – shriveled, dark; on the whole unappetizing.
Dark picture
The ruined fruit was ready for picking two weeks ago. But there was nobody to pick it. The usual workforce has either been arrested and deported under Trump’s new foreign worker rules. Or the workers fear such treatment at the hands of the President’s often heavy-handed ICE raiders, and have gone to ground.
They should have been picked a couple of weeks ago to tempt shoppers at markets and stores, or processed to garnish Shirley Temple mocktails, shiny and fat, promising bursts of sweetness.
The lost harvest has hit almost a quarter of Chandler’s 125 acres of cherry trees, CNN reports. And not because of bad weather, disease or blight. Simply because there was no one to pick the fruit.
Fear and loathing in Cali
Chandler’s harvest workforce comes mainly from Southern California, where he’s been told ICE enforcement has been especially aggressive. Even his most loyal workers aren’t risking tavelling north.
The result has been lost revenues for Chandler he estimates will top (US)$250.000, possibly reaching $300,000.
“It’s lost revenue for the operation, which is one thing, but it’s also lost revenue for the workers [who]] would have been able to pick them had they been here,” he points out.
Hard situation to track…
The US Department of Agriculture estimates 42 percent of hired crop farm workers are undocument-ed immigrants, the CNN story recounts. They have no authorization to work. Another 26 percent, however, are immigrants who have become citizens or permanent residents.
Since April, 1.4 million people have dropped out of the US labor force – 802,000 of whom were foreign-born, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Farm workers are not tracked in the official monthly jobs reports, either. But analysts agree immigration policy is having an impact generally across the nation.
My Take
“What you’re going to see is a bunch of fat, happy raccoons this winter,” Chandler told reporters, standing amid his unpicked trees. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to harvest these.”
Now… Take into account that there are other soft fruit crops just waiting their turn to be harvested – including plums, peaches, apricots, berries and more. All of which face the same fate as Candlers’ cherries.
American farmers are looking at, potentially, billions of dollars in losses, in total. And there’s nothing they can do about it…
~ Maggie J.